Welcome and Topic Introduction

Andrew Copson 0:01

Welcome to Unholy Histories, the Humanist Heritage Podcast brought to you by Humanist UK. I'm Andrew Cobson, Chief Executive of Humanist UK.

Madeleine Goodall 0:09

And I'm Madeline Goodall, head of the Humanist Heritage Project.

Andrew Copson 0:13

We're the hosts of this new podcast series where we will be speaking with experts about Britain's humanist history, uncovering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped both humanist thought and our national life.

Madeleine Goodall 0:38

In 1789, British philosopher Jeremy Bentham asked a deceptively simple question about the treatment of animals. The question is not, he wrote, can they reason, nor can they talk, but can they suffer? That question sits within a long and rich tradition, one whose seeds were planted by Victorian reformers, grew through the campaign as an activist of the 20th century, and continues to shape the animal rights movement we know today. In this episode of Unholy Histories, we explore how humanist ethics have reached beyond the human, tracing the secular roots of animal advocacy and the scientists, philosophers, writers, and campaigners who helped to build it. To discuss the history of these ideas, we're joined by Dr. Helen Cowie, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of York, whose books include Animals in World History, and Dr. Andrew Fenton, Professor of Philosophy at Dalhousie University, whose publications include the co-authored The Three Pillars of Ethical Research with Non-Human Primates. And today it is just me. We're missing our regular co-host, Andrew Cobson, but hopefully you'll bear with me anyway. So to start this episode, I think we'll just begin with a brief introduction to the areas of work of both of

Meet Helen Cowie and Andrew Fenton

Madeleine Goodall 1:48

you. And thanks again so much for joining us on this podcast, joining me on this podcast. So, Helen, maybe starting with you. Can you tell us something about the work and research that you do and what drew you to these areas of study?

Helen Cowie 2:02

Yeah, absolutely. So I work on the history of animals, very broadly speaking, actually. And I guess what drew me to it was the fact that I'm really interested in animals and I really love history. So it's a very sort of simplistic explanation for how I got there. The actual route for getting there was a little bit more winding because I think when I started doing history, sort of as an undergraduate, animal history wasn't really a thing that you could do. I didn't think it was kind of a respectable field of study. So I started really looking at sort of animals in the context of science, specifically studying sort of the natural history of animals in the Spanish Empire, sort of collecting and classifying specimens from places like Mexico. But then gradually over the past decade or so, animal history has really come into its own. More and more people are studying it, it's a recognized field. So I've I've found I can sort of come out the closet and be an animal historian. Since then, I've I've done projects looking at animals in zoos and travelling menageries in the 19th century, which obviously has a big welfare angle to it. It's mostly quite depressing, actually. I've written a slightly cheerier book about llamas and their history. And most recently, I've been looking at animals as commodities, particularly in the Victorian period in Britain, and particularly in the context of women's fashion. So things like seal skin, ostrich feathers, animal perfumes like sibet musk and amber green, and also as a bit of a tangent, things like exotic pets like parrots and monkeys. And I guess thinking about some of the ethical issues that were brought up at the time, really, surrounding both sort of the welfare and often the mistreatment of these animals, but also the ecological problems of killing a lot of seals and how do you sort of maintain the population? And actually one of the things that interests me and that you know we might discuss in this conversation is I suppose the balance between animal welfare on the one hand and more sort of conservationist approaches to animals, sort of species versus individual. So that's in a in a nutshell some of the things that that I that's fascinating.

Madeleine Goodall 3:52

Thank you. And Andrew, what about you? Because you're coming at it, I suppose, from a slightly different angle, maybe.

Andrew Fenton 3:58

But Yeah, because well, I'm a philosopher. And so we don't and I'm not a historian of philosophy as well. So I do a lot of contemporary work. And so I I work in uh my primary focus in animal ethics is the alignment of ethic standards as we move from scientific human use to scientific animal use. So using the lead of uh the ethics of scientific human use to see an alignment, better alignment of ethics when it comes to animals. So I'm particularly interested in real principles as opposed to the three R's of replacement, reduction, and refinement. So real principles like respect for the animals, beneficence, justice, and so also their agency. So I'm very interested. So in progressive bioethics on the human side, because I I teach a little bit on the human bioethics side, you have things like care for consent and dissent. And I think both those constructs, suitably adjusted, can work for other animals, particularly in scientific context. How I got there was I um I'm a trained epistemologist, but just theory of knowledge, rational belief, that sort of thing. And in my dissertation years, I started working on contemporary primate studies, what folks in primatology were saying about chimpanzees and bonobos, and what it would mean to re-see them as equal epistemic subjects or agents to humans, and what it would mean to how we do academic epistemology. And then post-dissertation got sucked into work on ethics because my primary training was in epistemology, just quotating epistemology, just ordinary, not scientific epistemology. And then I got pulled into the to the ethics because of postdoc work and then beyond.

Madeleine Goodall 5:46

Fascinating. And I I think there, well, I think I'm right in saying, and I think we'll go on and talk a bit about it, but there are some kind of crossovers historically between the these ideas and the work that you've both done, Henry Salt being one of those characters who I also love. So it's uh it's great that we'll get to talk about him. But it is really interesting, I think, and actually perfect for something like a I think a podcast like this, where on the one hand, there is this very for me, the heritage, the history angle, you know, how we've got to where we are, how people have expressed these values that we maybe have now or are exploring and expanding now, and how we came to those in who are the kind of precursors of whether it's campaigners or intellectuals or or whatever, today. So it's uh it's really nice to have that kind of married up with this more philosophical approach, but also, you know, applied philosophical approach about how it is that we come to those um those arguments and those kind of decisions about how we treat human animals and also how that balances against those kind of scientific concerns or those wider concerns about you know human welfare and and how we balance those competing ideas. So it's all very fascinating to me. But it would be probably good to, I guess, lay the groundwork on this in terms of thinking about how people have explored this human-animal relationship over time.

How People Learned About Animals

Madeleine Goodall 7:09

I mean, Helen, you've talked to a little bit about it already in in your kind of introduction to what you do and what you've studied. But it is interesting, and I think, you know, that as I say, in the context of kind of humanism and humanist history, how many of these arguments have been rooted in kind of scientific or rationalist or humanist worldviews? And similarly, you know, how did that balance with kind of Christian or religion or religious concerns about these things? How were those arguments reflected in in the the history of the development of animal welfare ideas?

Helen Cowie 7:43

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a big question. And I guess taking a sort of big perspective on humans and sort of knowing and understanding animals, there have been different reasons for trying to understand them and for looking into it. And I guess, I mean, there's been curiosity about animals going a long way back. You know, so even if you're looking at sort of like cave paintings at Outer Mirror, or you're looking at the work by people like Pliny or Aristotle, there's been this interest in sort of representing animals, classifying them, understanding what they eat, how they behave, how what they can understand potentially. And I guess at the bottom of that actually has often been this question of fundamentally what is the difference between animals and humans, and I guess what's the difference between different animals as well, and you know, drawing these kind of distinctions. And some of this you would classify as to some extent rational and scientific. We might look at someone like Charles Darwin would be a classic example, studying sort of Galapagos finches, trying to understand speciation and ultimately evolution. Similarly, someone like Alfred Russell, Walter Wallace, going in with a hypothesis, observing stuff closely, recording it, testing it. We would see as you know, they had other influences on them due to the period they were working in, but it was a scientific kind of question.

Faith Traditions And Early Animal Concern

Helen Cowie 8:50

But I think you can also find lots of examples of people studying animals for slightly different reasons. And I mean, one of these would be in sort of the medieval or early modern period, the reason you're studying animals is to illustrate God's work, really, and to understand the Bible and to use animals as representative of God's beneficence, things like medieval bestiaries. These are these wonderful documents containing lots of images of animals, including ones that don't exist, like unicorns, elephants with big sort of trumpet-like trunks from someone who's clearly never seen one. But the point of this isn't to observe the animal really as it is, but it's to sort of relate fables about it and often to use animals as allegories. So there's a sort of an image of the pelican supposedly kind of rips the flesh from its own breast to feed its young, and this is supposed to represent Christ, for instance. And I think you have something similar when Europeans go and encounter New World animals, and it kind of blows their mind to see an anti tor sloth, and then they're confronted with, well, there's no sloths in the Bible. How do we deal with this? How do we explain this? And people like the Jesuit Jose de Costa spend like a really long time trying to work out where their llamas on Noah's Ark and those sort of questions. So there are those kind of impulses as well. It's not all necessarily scientific, but and and actually a lot of people it's it can be both. It's not one or the other necessarily.

Madeleine Goodall 10:06

Yeah, absolutely. That's that's so true. And I think it's interesting. You I suppose it's kind of in a way how we or mirrors the the history that we look at more broadly in terms of the kind of development of humanist thought as we might define it now, has a a kind of non-religious approach that's rooted in science and all of those things. But you know, in these in the medieval world, for example, of course, they're so steeped in this this religious belief system that it it of course makes sense that you know you're you're looking at animals, you're exploring animals and trying to understand animals in that context and then asking questions. But I think that's such an interesting idea, isn't it? The idea of would this have been on the ark? Is this where's this in the Bible? How do we how do we compute those? And you you wonder as well, actually, if that might have contributed to some people almost the emergence of doubt in some of their their minds. That's quite an interesting concept, too, isn't it? And again, how that would have been expressed if it was at all, or that kind of thing. And and similarly with the idea of kind of allegories and animal allegories, on the one hand, you can look at those sometimes and think, oh, actually, this is a really a very kind of humanist way of understanding this. Of course, we're uh we're using animals to do it, but we are, you know, this is a this is a almost a secular way of solving this problem or understanding this, you know, situation through the these animals. But as you say, if if of course they're referencing biblical stories or they're meant to stand in for religious figures, then there's this kind of flip side of of the coin. So that's really, really fascinating. Andrew, anything you uh that sparked off uh for you there?

Andrew Fenton 11:40

Yeah, I have a background in religious studies. I did my undergraduate, but there was religious studies. So the my mentor was uh South Asianist, as they used to be called, or still are called, I think. And so I have an interest in South Asian philosophies, particularly in the classical into the early medieval period. Uh and one of the things that's striking, and Henry Salt mentions the historical Buddha. I mean, one of the things that's striking about South Asian discussions and what we would now call ethics, uh, is they are very attuned to other animals. It's not just about humans. Now, they have, you know, metaphysics that work into this, like things like transmigration, but I don't I don't think that you have to, and I don't want to be anachronistic here, but I don't think you have to um read this as wholly religiously motivated. I mean, I think they're attuned to the fact that animals can suffer and also the positive side, that they can experience positive emotional states. And I that, you know, it gets raised. The the ahimsa ethics principle that you see emerge in the classical period in South Asia, probably originally from the Jain tradition, uh, is very attuned to the well-being of other animals. And one of the, I think, as I say to my students, one of the most ambitious ethics principles we've ever seen in moral philosophies. It's very hard to live by, which is why it's so ambitious. Uh, but I think it's I think it's worth noting. And also Saul Oilian's work on the Hebrew Bible is interesting for me. I have been using some of his stuff in my classes, and his as long as you don't treat the Bible as univocal, and I think that's a serious mistake because it's spread out over a whole bunch of years from various different authors. Of course, they don't speak with one voice on pretty well anything except perhaps adultery, but uh apart from that, uh, but if you look at some of the early Torah, you do have what he has given a good case for thinking are animal legal rights. And so in Exodus 23, you have a Sabbath-day law, for instance, that's partly motivated by giving working animals rest. I don't think you have to think of that theologically to understand what they're attuned to. And also the flood, what's interesting about the flood, and I love that there's two stories superimposed there. One of the things that's lovely about that, I think, is it's bookended by two things that are animal-related that I love pointing out to students. One is um uh all flesh sins. That's why divinity floods the earth. It's not just humans. And so there's an old capture of moral agency there that's really interesting because I, you know, I I think that's right. Uh, and then the covenant with the survivors of the flood isn't just for humans. And so it's all the survivors, and that often gets misconstrued in the anthropocentrism of theology. And it's always interesting to draw my students' attention to it and go, wait a second, what if we don't treat this as univocal? What if we treat it as a, you know, critically historically what pops out if you're not worried about making this meaningful for yourself? And so I think it's I think those are commonalities we can have. And again, not being anachronistic, there's all sorts of stuff going on and they are folks of their time. But I think that kind of attunement is something we can all recognise as significant.

Madeleine Goodall 14:54

Yeah, and I think seeing or remembering that it is this human creation, as you say, in the context of their time and in what they were doing, thinking about. So those ideas, I think that's the idea of yeah, giving animals rest on the Sabbath day is is incredibly interesting. And I suppose

Zoos, Spectacle And Hidden Cruelty

Madeleine Goodall 15:13

so Helen, you've uh obviously written about I guess m moving on a bit later than that, but menageries, zoos, that kind of thing. And when I've read some of the things that you've written about that, there is this really interesting on the one hand, these arguments that came from the idea that it was, you know, it was against God, it was against, I suppose, the idea of stewardship to treat animals in zoos, to live feed animals in zoos. And then on the other hand, you do have these arguments that are uh, I guess, less less directly rooted in that idea. I just want to talk a bit uh about that because I just oh it's so interesting.

Helen Cowie 15:53

I mean that that particular the live feeding thing is a very grisly topic and a bit niche, but I I came upon it actually reading the humanitarian, so sort of Henry Salt's journal for the Humanitarian League. And what struck me is he keeps going on and on about snake feeding at the zoo, and I thought, well, what's this? And and effectively this was the fact that snakes at this was London zoo specifically, at sort of the turn of the 20th century, were being fed on live prey, which in one instance was a goat, which someone got very upset about because he'd been petting it and was told it was going to be fed to the snake. But it usually it was guinea pigs or rats or birds, and there was a whole debate about this, you know, should should effectively animals that were deemed to be sort of lower in the animal hierarchy as they saw it, should they be fed to animals that were higher up than them? And this created all kinds of concerns for salt, but then there'd been a kind of earlier phase of concern about this with the RSPCA, which was a more sort of Christian conservative movement, which we might talk about a bit later. For them, the big concern actually was that this was happening in public. So you could go along on a Friday and you could watch the snakes being fed, and children were watching, and women were watching, and they write. They give some quite detailed examples of this, and that really bothered them. So it was the kind of brutalizing of the public was the concern, and that was deemed sort of unchristian and unacceptable. But the response to that was that they moved it behind closed doors. And what's what interests me about Salt is that his big concern is actually that it's happening in secret, and when there's no sort of surveillance of it, it might be crueler. And yeah, this chimes with some of his concerns about sort of abattoirs and about the other sort of more vivisection mistreatment of animals in private. So this is sort of big campaign to stop this. And you do get then these debates coming out, partly about does God decree that snakes must eat live prey? And biologically, this is quite complicated. Um, but some people arguing in favour of it at the zoo are like, maybe it's God's will, you know, so we have to do it. If not, it's kind of cruel to the snake. But then other people are coming in and say, well, I'm sure God doesn't decree. Well, he might decree that the snakes eat live prey, but he doesn't decree that we put it in a cage with them where it can't escape. And so there's all these sort of power dynamics going on. Anyway, it's a very grisly and depressing topic, but it does crystallise some of these debates. And perhaps it connects with other things that Salt is worried about, things like sort of deer being released to be hunted that have previously been tamed. So I think he's really using it as a sort of surrogate for other things. But yeah, it does blend these kind of Christian ideas about what you know, what are animals supposed to do and what are humans' duties towards animals with more sort of secular thought and studies of zoology and you know, see what practice is being used in other zoos, where actually they're often sort of force-feeding snakes, which I'm not sure that's better either. So there's lots of debates going on there. So but a weird and grisly topic.

Madeleine Goodall 18:34

Yeah, it is weird and grisly, but it is very interesting. And I think as you say, these these accounts that that you get from people who've seen this happening, and you know, the guinea pig squealing or the rabbit, or it it is it's gruesome, but uh I think then to think about uh as you say all of the different things that that kind of touches upon, this idea of hierarchy, whether you're whether that's in a kind of notionally scientific way, or if it is this kind of, okay, what's the hierarchy of animals here? Mammals above reptiles. So what does that mean about whether or not we should feed a a rabbit to a snake? And also I think it's it's fascinating that idea of this fear about if it's done in public, risking brutalizing, you know, children, women, and men, of course, too, um, in the same way that watching a a public execution uh might, um, turning into this spectacle. But then also that fear of, okay, well, if it goes behind closed doors, who's monitoring it? Who's able to see the levels of cruelty that are being inflicted and all of that? So it does seem to pull so many things together in a way that is really fascinating. I'm aware

Henry Salt And The Humanitarian League

Madeleine Goodall 19:43

now that we've talked a bit about SALT and the Humanitarian League, but haven't necessarily, for anybody listening to the podcast who might not know about him, do either I because I know either of you, uh both of you have obviously worked on SALT and looked at Salt in different ways. Maybe we could just so have a bit of an introduction to who he was, what the Humanitarian League was, and then maybe how he has come into the work of both of you. So, Andrew, do you want to do you want to give a little potted uh history of sure, although I'm I'm nervous doing this in front of a historian.

Helen Cowie 20:18

Oh, don't don't be. I'm I'm really not a salt expert.

Andrew Fenton 20:20

I'm I'm just interested in his snake, so it's kind of well you you jump in to correct me on anything and don't feel hesitant to that, because I will not pretend to be an expert in history. So I'm I am just a philosopher. So just jump in, whatever. But his his years are 1851 to 1939. He uh was educated in Eton and Cambridge and then went back to teach classics in Eaton. I think those years are something like 1875 to 1884 or something like that. Though feel free to correct me, Ellen, if I'm getting it wrong. And if I've got that wrong to anyone listening in the audience, my apologies. But it's something something like that. He he actually leaves Eaton because he over time becomes quite taken with socialism and quite taken with vegetarianism as a part of the overall 19th century, late 19th century movement of food reform. And so he goes, he lives off a pension with his first wife, Kate, and lives off the land. They have a little garden, etc., and just writes and writes and writes. I mean, he wrote almost 40 books. He managed the two journals for the Humanitarian League that was founded in 1891 and dissolved in 1919. I think the First World War had a huge uh negative impact uh on the movement, and uh certainly uh Henry Salt was quite disheartened by what was witnessed through the First World War. He lost his first wife in 1919 too, and I think he was uh deeply fond of her. It was a complicated relationship, from what I understand, and there's lots to uncover about that. To get clear on that, because I think there's some interesting suggestions going on in the background about what might have been going on in that relationship that say something about Henry Salton, his commitment to what we would now think of as the LGPT community, because I think he was actually quite liberal and quite supportive of human rights quite broadly. And so I think he was quite protective of his work. First wife, George Markshaw, who was a friend, thought of her as lesbian. I think there's good reasons to think that, just from some of the records I've seen described about her. And so that's interesting in itself because I think Henry Salt was very protective of her. He was also good friends with Edward Carpenter, who had uh was quite out of having a husband. And so uh he was very fond of Edward as well, and I think quite protective of them. And I think that says a lot about Henry Salt and his interest in animals. He's uh uh Helen's already uh intimated the and discussed the stuff about captive animals uh in zoos. He's also very concerned about domesticated animals, both as pets or companion animals and uh working animals, horses, cows. He's a gradualist in his ethics. And so he's for social reform, but recognizes it's gonna take a long time. As his work goes on, he becomes less and less sure how long this is gonna take. And so it's gonna take centuries, maybe longer, to see these changes. But he's uh, as Helen uh has suggested, he's very much, you know, he'll he'll go for advances. It doesn't have to change overnight. He knows it won't change overnight. And so things like what's happening in private is very important, like the private slaughterhouses, the humanitarian league is very much against that. If you're gonna have slaughterhouses, they want them to be public and for having folks in them that know what they're doing. And so he, you know, he's very concerned about how class in Britain works out in that. So you have lots of folks from from low to low economic status working in the shambles, the private slaughterhouses. And he's very concerned about that because he's very concerned about the social impact of that on the individuals doing it, as well as, of course, the other animals. And so his inclusive justice frame, because he's quite species inclusive, um, always has in the air not just other animals, but humans as well. And he's very concerned to make sure that as we move forward as a society, we're committed to broad social reform, not just about animals. And we have that big picture always in mind as we work on whatever we're working on in the reform movement writ large. Does that help? Is that I'm not sure I've missed it.

Madeleine Goodall 24:49

Yeah, no, that was great. I think that's one of the things that really uh drew me to the idea of the Humanitarian League and to SALT when I came across it was this idea of they just there was all sorts of things, all these humanitarian reforms that they wanted across all areas. They it was prison reform as well, and you know, all of these things that were about very much and they were links to the the Union of Ethical Societies, which is now Humanist UK, you know, they they had a lot of um both sympathies between members and also direct links. And that idea, I think, of which was at the heart of the ethical societies about how do we live our values, how do we get these values reflected in the laws, the customs, the things that we think are acceptable now, but may not think are acceptable in this longer time scale, which I think again is is really fascinating to hear, you know, uh to think about SALT, you know, gradually thinking, oh, okay, this might take longer than I thought. We certainly see that a lot in the the history of of all sorts of kind of reforms that uh that many of the people we've talked about, uh certainly on the the podcast, including in fact the we have done an episode on um LGBT rights, and SALT didn't come up, but Carpenter did. And and that it's again, I think this very intertwined figuring out what is acceptable, what do we think of as natural or unnatural, how do we legislate on that, uh draws these connections between these seemingly very you know different areas of of reform. But I suppose to me it is when you take somebody like Salt, who was very much a rationalist, a humanist, that drawing together, you know, rooted in this, these core values, and then applying those to all of these areas in which he sees injustice or inhumanity, whether that is the treatment of and the laws around uh homosexuality, or whether that's animal rights, or whether that's in prisons, or whether that's, as you say, the idea, and it links back to uh what Helen was talking about, the this potential brutalisation of people who are working in these areas or exposed to these things, perhaps by necessity, that that have an impact on their their kind of who they are and and their kind of moral framework and all of those things. Which again, I think at that point where people are figuring out, exploring, you know, certainly things like the ethical societies, and I think Salt himself, you know, what is this ethic that we can live by that doesn't require the idea of a creator or a you know any kind of supernatural thing, but that is rooted in human beings? How do we figure that out? And do I think doing that in relation to or inclusive of, as you say, other species, other animals, is really fascinating, kind of taking us towards a less anthropocentric, hopefully, moral system. So, yeah, thank you. That's that was great. Helen,

RSPCA Reform Versus Radical Change

Madeleine Goodall 27:54

is there anything you want to, I suppose, about SALT? And I know that you mentioned earlier this that kind of the Humanitarian League and the arguments of the Humanitarian League and actions of the Humanitarian League were quite in contrast with something like the RSPCA, which people are, for many reasons, more familiar with.

Helen Cowie 28:12

Yeah, I mean, I'd endorse a lot of what Andrew was said, so that's a really, really good sort of backdrop. Yeah, I mean, I think I I actually have studied the more the RSPCA probably more than Henry Sword myself, so it's really interesting seeing the two of them and seeing how they debate on things like women's fashion or vivisection. And I think, well, there are a few differences. I mean, one of the big ones is that the RSPCA is it's mostly a sort of Christian, more conservative organisation. But you know, they people do generally care about animals, but it tends to be a bit more sort of selective. People like sort of explicitly say we care about animals that will be classified as vermin, you know, we should worry about weasels and rats and wolves, just the same as we should worry about cats and dogs and horses. So it's this more sort of inclusive ethic of animals, and as Andrew said, of certain human groups as well. And it's more holistic, I suppose. So not sort of playing one form of cruelty off against another, because you you found often people trying to defend, say, skinning seals for their fur, say, or you know, it's it's no worse than what happens in a slaughter yard in Chicago. But basically both of them are terrible. So it's if you take this more sort of holistic process, it's it doesn't allow you to sort of say, oh, you're hypocritical because you're doing this or that. I mean, I think another thing is the RSP is much RSPCA is much of a sort of gradualist and it's about mitigating cruelty, not necessarily abolishing it. So with something like Vivisection, you know, they do take the lead and they do try to regulate it. They get a law passed in 1876, which means that in theory you have to use anaesthetic on animals if you're going to experiment on them. You know, if you seriously injure an animal, you have to kill it before it wakes up. But there are lots of sort of get-out clauses and loopholes that you can actually get around if you know the right people. Whereas SART would say, abolish it. There's not a reason to do this. We need to seriously think about the rights of the animals, as I know Andrew has worked on. Um, I mean, the other big, big ones are things like vegetarianism, which salt and the humanitarian league promote, saying it's it's kind of hard to be kind to an animal if you're ultimately going to eat it, no matter all the excuses you make about it, we have to eat it, we'll slaughter it kindly. Ultimately, it's it's a bit of a contradiction. But you know, the RSPCA doesn't say that. It is against things like live exports. It talks about how we can kill animals more nicely, in theory. And you know, there's value to that, but it's not saying be vegetarian and most of its members wouldn't have been. And I think the other big one I'd flag is hunting for sport, which sort is really strongly against things like fox hunting, also, as I've mentioned, hunting particularly kind of tame animals, pigeons, deer that are released to be shot. He's strongly against that. RSPCA, not so much. Don't really tackle it. Go for sort of lower class sports, like sort of bull and bear bait. I mean, actually, elite people attended those two, but they're kind of deemed lower class sports. And he is willing to go for the royals, the director of London Zoo, in the case of the snake feeding, the vivisectors who are sort of elite educated people. So he's more socially inclusive in terms of who he criticises, I guess, as well as in terms of who he supports.

Madeleine Goodall 31:03

And what kind of arguments was he, or from what kind of angle, I suppose, was he coming at? Some so blood sports is a really interesting one, for example. I mean, what was his what were his arguments rooted in? What was he saying?

Helen Cowie 31:18

I mean, I suppose it was part injustice was part of it, and often the unfairness of these sports, in the particular, like I say, if an animal's been released and can't genuinely escape, it's not a fair fight. I mean, he wasn't the only person to say that, and they're a sort of wider, you know, a big game hunter in the Victorian period would also have said it needs to be a fair fight, where we can debate how fair it really was. But they tended to be against sort of things like what we call pot hunting, where people just go and shoot stuff and you know, or commercial hunting where it's sort of done en masse. But it was partly that, I think, the sort of justice, the fact that the animal couldn't escape. But also it was about pain and suffering that was being inflicted on these animals. And as in the case of the snake feeding, the sort of length of it, the nature of it, the necessity of it, which you know, he would have said, you know, it's no one really needs to go and hunt a fox. I mean, he does also point out that they are actually importing foxes to hunt, and you know, it's considered in the Victorian people period a sort of crime if you commit what's called vulpicide, which is basically killing a fox, but not as a hunter. So if you're a farmer and you go and shoot a fox, you shouldn't be doing it because what are they going to hunt? You know, so actually, this whole idea that you know fox hunting is pest control, he sort of points out that's not really what they're using it for. They're maintaining the population to hunt it. So the welfare angle is, I think, really important to him. And I think he would have applied that too to animals that were quite common. So you see this in more generally the Humanitarian League's response to legislation to protect big game in Africa, for instance, which is really about protecting animals that are considered useful to Victorians and excludes animals that they don't like effectively. But it's not about welfare, it's about preserving numbers. Whereas there's a sort of response to that from the Humanitarian League saying, you know, in some ways it doesn't matter that there are lots of, I don't know, lions or whatever it is, they can still suffer just as the same. So I think the suffering thing is part of it too.

Andrew Fenton 33:08

I

Rights, Evolution And Animal Personhood

Andrew Fenton 33:09

can add to that as well. So the so just as a philosopher thinking of the argument structure. So one of the things he's very taken with and runs with is so Jeremy Bentham, who he quotes from time to time in Johnster Bill as well, are both uh well-known classic utilitarians, though Salt himself is not utilitarian. But what's interesting is he Bentham makes mention in a footnote to his introduction on morals and legislation. He the, I think you had some of the quote already, Maddie, earlier. He mentions rights. LV means legal rights, not moral rights, because utilitarians are allergic to moral rights. And he also mentions the, you know, the the commonality, the the relevant similarities, uh, both of capacities. So he compares a horse and dog to an infant to actually uh talk about uh these these animals are more intelligent and conversible than an infant of a week old or a month old. And so he's uh making the move, that is Bentham's making the move, of you know, these animals have capacities that are in diminished form with already protected humans. And that move actually echoes through time in philosophical ethics or reflective ethics. And so for Salt, the right stuff really takes him. So the his first edition of Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress comes out in 1892. He has three editions of it. The second edition comes out in 1915, and then the third edition is 1922. And by 1915, he has some appendices that he's pulled in from some of the other stuff that he's done, including in the two journals for the Humanitarian League. And there's a number of moving parts that he has. So evolution is really important for salt. So the notion that we have common origins with other animals around us that supports the notion of a kinship. And he thinks of it as a universal kinship that ties into Howen's discussion of animals that are often neglected because they're, say, nuisance or regarded as pests or vermin. Uh, for salt, language was very important for him. He objected to calling animals livestock. He objected to using the impersonal pronouns. He insisted on personal pronouns. He was very taken. Bentham also mentions in that part of his introduction that part of the legacy here for animals in law is they were seen as things rather than persons. And Salt runs with that too. He sees other animals as persons. He's quite clear about that. In fact, he ends up in one of in the 1900 essay he has, I think in the International Journal of Ethics, he ends that essay with a, you know, one of the core principles is treat other animals as you would like to be treated if you were that animal. So that's the first thing is evolution. Then the second thing is recognizing that they're already protected humans with protections that he will call rights, which includes liberty and freedom to develop ourselves and our individuality, character, and reason. Because we share a common ancestry with other animals, they have these capacities as well, albeit in diminished form. And so for him, that's all he needs for the parody argument. You put all that moving parts together, and he opens the book, uh, Animals' Rights with Do Animals Have Rights? Well, if humans, if men do, yes. And that parody move is based on these moving parts. Common origin, universal kinship, or sometimes he talks about it as a universal brotherhood, uh reflects a bit of his socialism, I think, as he's using that kind of language. I don't think it's a coincidence, I suspect. Uh, then you have the shared similarities between humans and other animals. Those similarities are what support the rights of humans. So their liberties to develop themselves on their own terms is very much what for salt is why humans are protected, but because those are there with other animals, albeit in diminished form, they get to enjoy rights as well as an as a matter of justice. And so that's and then because it's evolutionary and common origins, of course he can't neglect any animals that share this ancestry and these capacities. And so it's quite radically inclusive, like very, very much relevant to contemporary discussions. It's this is very much how we go now. And I think it's largely a philosophical indebtedness to folks like Henry Salton.

From Salt To Speciesism

Madeleine Goodall 37:29

And I and I suppose so maybe Helen, you can comment on this or either of you are Did these did these kind of shifts in or these arguments, I suppose, Bentham and then later Salt, did they have a direct impact on things like, you know, wider social attitudes and law changes, law reforms as as linked to animals? Was there, can you trace that through?

Helen Cowie 37:55

I mean, I think it it certainly filters into some of the discussion. I mean they're probably less successful at pushing through laws than the RSPCA, partly because it's more conservative. Yeah, I don't want to be knocking the RSPCA here. I think they're a very sort of gradualist organization, but but that works. You know, you go for the sort of low-hanging fruit, you get through what you can. You know, they do pass laws to protect animals in captivity. There's one in 1900 that sort of gets rid of a distinction that existed between domestic animals and wild animals and basically allowed you to sort of beat up a hyena in a menagerie with no consequence. There's lots of, I won't go into this, there's lots of very sort of weird cases where people try to define what does domesticity mean. And they sort of get over that. But I mean, sort is critical of some of this, pointing out that this doesn't go far enough and it doesn't include hunted animals. So you do get some movement there, you get movements to protect things like sort of pit ponies, other animals that were sort of mistreated, more legislation for things like the section. In 1925, there's a big big act passed to protect performing animals, which was one of the things that actually salt was very worried about. Again, because they were trained in private, and also because they were often trained to do control things. I mean, Andrew talked about allowing animals to sort of have their own natural development to be individuals, and you know, performing animals weren't allowed to do that effectively. So some of that filters through, and I think a lot of more broadly the ideas do filter through to the contemporary animal rights movement and to the way that is presented, particularly when it comes sort of, it sort of revives itself in the 60s and 70s. You get the sort of anti-fur movement, um, people like Peter Singer writing about animal rights and sort of animal agriculture. So I think it's very relevant today. I'm not sure how directly it immediately influences things, partly because it is perhaps too radical for some people and it's it's difficult, right? You're asking people, you know, not to eat meat, not to do things that are difficult for humans. And I think sometimes we don't want to really confront that. But I think it does filter through, again, certainly towards the modern animal animal rights movement and some of the questions that they're asking and answering.

Andrew Fenton 39:49

I can jump in there too. One of the things I'm interested in, and this is something I may lean on you, Helen, from time to time. I won't abuse the privilege that we've met, but I wouldn't mind if I have some questions to you over time as I work on the SAL project. But there are some tantalizing connections. So here's some thin ones, and they are thin. I recognize they're thin. Bridget Brofe was a writer, wrote, I think it's the Sunday Times in 65, a Sunday Times piece on animal rights, actually puts it in those terms. Um, what's interesting about Bie is she gets connected to what's known as the Oxford group or the Oxford Vegetarians. These are the 1970s group that Singer gets introduced to through a Canadian by the name of Richard Keshin, who's one of my colleagues here in Nova Scotia. He's retired now, but he and I still get to chat a bit and I've chatted with him a bit about salt. And what's interesting about this is the Godloviches, who really were central to the Oxford group at the time, were salt fans. They knew salt. Brophy introduced a writer, Richard Ryder, to the Oxford group, and he's the one that coined the phrase speciesism. So this is the connection to speciesism as a term that folks like Peter Singer popularize in the 70s on. And interestingly, they have an anthology that comes out. I think it's 1971, though. Apologies to anyone listening that goes, wait a second, it's not 71. I am not a historian.

Helen Cowie 41:10

I am, but I don't know the dates either for half of these things. So we carefully avoid mentioning them in history usually. Sorry, do carry on.

Andrew Fenton 41:17

No, no, no, no, really bad. But the what's interesting interesting about the anthology is Salt is quoted twice. So he's quoted by one of the Godlaviches and he's quoted by Bridget Brophy, uh, because she's in that anthology. And then Petersinger does a book review of that anthology, and I think he titles it Animal Liberation. And then a book company sees him do that and goes, Will you write a book on that title? And so you've got, and even the way Peter puts up, sets up his first introduction in his animal liberation book. He, you know, he mentions the vindications for the rights of men, he mentions the vindications for the rights of women with Wollstonecraft, then he mentions the vindication of the rights of brutes, that I think it was Thomas Taylor who wrote anonymously as a caricature of rights talk, particularly women's rights talk. All of that is insult. And so there are these thin connections. I think they're worth pondering. I think I think there are these connections in the air, so that as Singer and others move off in their directions, and of course, Singer is a utilitarian, and utilitarians have always been fine with rights as long as it's legal and can be justified from a utilitarian frame, always with that qualification. But you have people like Tom Reagan, uh, who will move in uh more rights proper. Uh, and although he, you know, he evidences Kantian influences and the way he talks about the subjects of a life. Uh, it's hard not to read SALT and see the philosophical echoes now. And so I'm confident there are thin connections that are worth exploring. But you know, I I'm still very early on in this work, so I'm still very much trying to find the thin lines. But I think they're there.

Madeleine Goodall 42:54

Bridget Rofe is a fascinating example, actually, because obviously she was, again, like Salt, very uh connected to the organized humanist movement as well, which is another reason why she's so interesting to me, as well as her, again, uh an activist on multiple levels. You know, Bridget Rofe was in part responsible for uh achieving the public lending rights so you know that that authors could be paid when their books were borrowed from the library. But then she was also very active in campaigns, you know, against things like blasphemy laws and um obscenity laws and things like that, and also in animal rights and and all of that. And in her own life, what I think is again is very interesting on the the kind of balancing these di these different arguments is that when she uh was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she continued to write against the use of animals in you know in medical testing and things like that. So it's the to me there there are these kind of interesting kind of connections. And also that she was one of the, you know, within the the humanist movement, the organized humanist movement. There's always been this very this interesting discussion going on between people. She was very forthright arguing for veganism, arguing against animal testing, all of those things. And then on the other hand, you have plenty of other humanists who, you know, notionally sharing a worldview have uh, you know, felt very differently on those. And that's the same, of course, with lots of ethical issues. But it is she's a really interesting figure, both because she was so forthright and upfront, and that animal rights aspect was really key to her activism, her kind of the causes that she championed. And also interesting connecting Salt because both she and Salt wrote in things like what is now the new humanist, but was then the literary guide and the humanist. Again, not always on animal rights. Um I keep thinking of a uh an article that Salt wrote actually about essentially arguing for assisted dying very early on, which is again something very much in the news and and in the in the courts indeed, or in courts in parliament at the moment. But I suppose thinking about how how I suppose one more contemporary humanist thinker might hark back to an earlier one who, you know, wrote in some of the same publications, even across a a real span of years, is I think very interesting. And then how their ideas may have been potentially for for some others, some others among the same, you know, movement as them, too radical, or asking too much, as Helen said, you know, just asking too much of people or people perceiving they were you know that too much was being asked of them to, you know, reevaluate what it in so many ways is so ingrained in our our culture, in our the way we're socialized, the way we're brought up in terms of the way we use, consume, hunt potentially um animals. So uh yeah, I do think there's a a really interesting grophy and salt are are two uh just uh incredibly interesting uh figures within that kind of longer, longer trajectory. I suppose thinking about that, and we're coming to the end of the conversation now, but it thinking about that and thinking about how these different activists over kind of almost generations of activism, I suppose, have thought about these things.

What Their Ideas Change Now

Madeleine Goodall 46:25

What do you feel like that their relevance is is now for either us as individuals or for kind of wider questions about animal rights, about the philosophy of you know speciesism, you know, maybe Helen first and then then Andrew.

Helen Cowie 46:41

I mean, I think a lot of it is relevant actually. And I mean I was rereading Salt for this this podcast and looking over a lot of what he'd written, and it really resonates. You know, a lot of the philosophical points he made. Uh sadly, a lot of the actual things he criticises still go on in one form or another. You know, we still have kind of trail hunting, if not fox hunting, which is very a cover for fox hunting. And in many ways, I think you'd be a bit disappointed that you know we've now moved to sort of factory farming and other things far from weeding ourselves off meat, globally, much more is being consumed. So I think the problems are very much still there. I think the emphasis he puts on kind of visibility of animal cruelty is really important. He was worried, like I say, about snake feeding and vivisection. Vivisection is still an issue, but new activists today would very much want to get sort of undercover footage from a factory farm to maybe prove that you know something that has an RSPCA red tractor on its label actually is covering up quite a lot of cruelty. So that kind of exposure of cruelty is a big thing. I think equally, I suppose the idea of sort of consistency and his more holistic approach is really important because something that you know you do see a lot in contemporary activism and criticism of activism, and I see a lot, is basically people again say, I mean, the classic one is trail hunting. So there's been a lot of stuff because the government's consulting on whether that should be banned, and there are a lot of activists sort of saying that it should and exposing what's going on. But every time I see something of this on Facebook, which the algorithm has decided I need to see, perhaps I'm surprised and given my interest. But every time you look at it, you look at the comments underneath, and you can guarantee someone will have said, why are you worrying about foxes and trail hunting? You should be worrying about, and the thing they specifically say is banning halal slaughter is always the one they go for. And obviously they don't care about cows very much, but they don't like Muslims. So it's okay, you know, it's the kind of racialised angle that you you very much get in some of this, you know, protest against it. Or you'll see someone, you know, talking about if there's something about factory farms or veganism, someone will inevitably say, well, someone will first say, I love bacon, ha ha ha. But then someone will probably say, Oh, if we didn't, if we all went vegan, then there wouldn't be any sort of cows or sheep, none of them would live. But that's something that Salt particularly talks about, the idea of is it better to sort of live and suffer or or not to exist? And he would probably say, Yep, not to exist under those circumstances. And this sort of idea of a natural life that animals should have, and ideas about animal personhood are really kind of important now. Yeah, people have used that. I think there's an orangutan that was in Buenos Aires Zoo that they declared a person, which actually meant she went to a sanctuary and was still in captivity. But those kind of debates are really significant. So for me, reading it made me think actually, depressingly we haven't come on as far as he or I would have liked, but also actually there's a lot we can learn from it philosophically, and I'm sure Andrew can expand on the philosophy side of that.

Andrew Fenton 49:25

Yeah, I mean, I love everything he said. Uh I like I think uh his stuff is still it's prescient and it's still very relevant. And Helen, I agree. I think it'd be very disheartening with factory farming. I think he'd be totally gutted by what's happened there. I think he would have been gutted by the post-war use of animals and science because it really took off after the Second World War. Things like the Nuremberg Code insisted on animal experimentation first. And so it just kind of skyrocketed. And we're only starting to see numbers drop now, although always in various pockets of scientific animal use. But I think the legacies here, you know, rights is still really, really relevant. I think the way he frames rights is really great. And so his way of doing the parody, well, if humans have them, other animals have them, I think is really important because it it does an end run around debates about what rights are and allows you to engage rights in a more fulsome way. So it doesn't matter if you're utilitarian or not. Let's work with, we have these protections for humans, we don't want to lose them. Where do we go from there? And I think he's relevant there. I think the evolutionary framework for this is really important because, of course, our common ancestry is really important for seeing uh similarities both across taxa and dissimilarities within our own. Because that's often lost, is that natural selection and other forces in evolution are making use uh in such a way that there is always diversity within a relevant taxon, and then similarities across taxa. And that's actually really important for ethics frames. And then Helen was mentioning some other things. Gradualism is really important for SAL. It's really important for SALT to have this inclusive justice frame. And I think you see that in certain animal advocacy groups now. So the Food Empowerment Project in California has an inclusive frame. Ecofeminism famously has an inclusive frame. So it's anti-classist, anti-racist, anti-speciesist. And they've for you know, people like Karen Warren were very clear about that in logics of domination, are to get rid of anywhere they appear. And so that kind of inclusivism is still there. And most importantly for SALT as well, and he was big on this, it's no infighting. So, you know, we can't all do everything at once. We're all for those of us committed to social reform, recognize the big picture, never lose sight of that, albeit within the gradualism, but don't fight each other. Recognize that we're all in together. And as long as we're all moving towards a more just world, we can see each other as allies and stop undermining each other, is one of the things that he's very clear about. I think the Humanitarian League were quite clear about this too. And as they have a number, as Helen was saying, they have a number of focuses within the group. You know, prison reform, corporal punishment, economic equality for women, anti-classism, and then you have the animal stuff as well. You have conservation and preservation as well. And so I think uh, you know, I those are all echoing now. And I think it's, you know, one of the mighty superpowers of echo feminism is bringing that to the fore now in ways that are incredibly useful. You know, I think there's lots of what goes on in salt. You could just take it out of salt and put it in now and go, we can run with these arguments.

Madeleine Goodall 52:47

And I think uplifting, it's it's it this is the thing, isn't it? That there's always that's that sense of, and as I said earlier, we we get it so much when we look at look back at the history. It's it's kind of like on the one hand, oh, we haven't made it feels like we haven't made that much progress at all. Sometimes we've backslid, sometimes some big things happened and it's turned everyone against this previously seen as possible future or or whatever it might be. And then on the other hand, you know, you read some of these, the writings of these people, you see some of the things that they did fight for and achieve, even if it did take a long time or sometimes took a long time and then suddenly happened. And you and there is that sense of of being able to take something from that, I think, you know, feel like we are continuing some kind of tradition of of these really remarkable people who often were. I love Henry Salt, you know, he he readily adopted that uh moniker that was was given to him about being a compendium of cranks, this idea that, you know, he was okay with b being seen as as a crank in all these different areas because, you know, it it meant that he was kind of pushing forward. And I also think, Andrew, what what you said there about this idea of of being in it together uh and that those ideas have been around for a long time. That actually that kind of intersectionality and and inclusiveness um across all these different areas, that we don't have to we don't have to lose sight of the big picture, and we also don't have to feel awful for picking and pursuing a thing really hard within that. You know, it's it it takes a yeah, it takes everyone, basically. And and I think that's something yeah, that is quite galvanizing, I s I suppose is the word.

Favourite Humanists And Reading Picks

Madeleine Goodall 54:34

So we always end this podcast with asking a standard question about who your favourite atheist or humanist is. We've talked a lot about Salt, obviously, and if you do want to give a final shout out to Salt, that is fine. But I will put the question to each of you. Do you have a favorite favourite atheist from history, Helen? Maybe you first?

Helen Cowie 54:56

Having just discussed it at length, it is really hard not to say Henry Salt. So perhaps Henry Salt is the answer. I mean, I will flag someone else of the humanitarian movement and the humanitarian league, who I do admire, is a woman, uh, Louise Linda Fagby, who was of Swedish, quite sort of noble extraction, but she was very strongly against vivisection, actually went and sort of observed vivisectures taking place at UCL, wrote it what was quite a scandalous book called The Shambles of Science in 1903 that actually got taken off. Well, a chapter got taken out for libelous reasons. But this was really exposing the mistreatment of animals. But she also then is talking about the consistency of this. So she's very pro-votes for women, but she then insists that women almost sort of need to earn these votes by, for example, not turning up at an anti-viver section meeting in a fur coat, you know, that sort of thing, which she saw and which happened. So I think she's an interesting character, and she, you know, she carried on campaigning for animals well into I think she dies in the possibly 1960s. Yeah, she lives quite a long time, and she opens animal sanctuaries and does various things. So I very much like her. And I guess I would give a shout out to Bentham, who we've slightly probably been eclipsed by a sort in this podcast. But the main reason I love him is well, first that he had himself embalmed, and second, that he had a pet pig. And I think I'm very pro-pig. So and a shout out for Bentham and the pigs as well. So sorry, I'm I'm vagant on the fence with this one, but all three are pretty good.

Madeleine Goodall 56:15

It's a good opportunity to throw some some extra names in that hopefully people can always go away and and discover more about. And what you just said actually reminded me of again of something that you mentioned earlier about this idea of making things visible, which again I think is a really key part of lots of these arguments too. It's uh and it reminds me again of something we talked about in a different episode about the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, who were working for uh law reforms in areas relating to sex and sexuality. But they talked about themselves as being a kind of light on things, shining a light on things, uh what did they call it? Uh well, a note of interrogation they called themselves, but but it was very much about you doing things with the light of science and and kind of growing understandings of that. And I think there's something interesting there too about these people in the animal ethics or animal rights field were doing in that sense of shining a light on things, both literally and figuratively. So yeah, fascinating. Andrew, over to you.

Andrew Fenton 57:14

Well, just to amplify something you said there as well, and something Helen has said more than once as well, is transparency, right? I mean, and the transparency is one of the central issues in scientific animal use. And it's, you know, that's an issue that we need to fight both on this side of the pond and on your side of the pond. And so I think that's really important to amplify. I mean, I'll go with Salt. If folks are listening and they're wondering about what to read as SALT's, because all his books are out of copyright, so you can get them free online. I would go with his Creative Kinship. That was his 1935 book. And so if you want to see, it was basically his way of doing a homage to the Humanitarian League. So it was basically, you know, here were their fundamental aims, and here's my take on all those aims. And it's very, it's very digestible book. It's very short, and all the chapters are quite short. But it'll take you through it all: corporate punishment, prison reform, uh, economic equality for women, uh, animals' rights. Um, so I'd recommend The Creed of Kinship for folks if they wanted to, you know, uh set themselves into salt. He's also very anti-imperialist. And so it actually fits quite now, quite well now, language around anti-war, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism. It's uh all of that will resonate with The Creed of Kinship.

Madeleine Goodall 58:30

Brilliant. Thank you both so much. That's been such a fascinating conversation. I'm extremely biased because I both find the humanist heritage uh element fascinating, but also as a vegan, I believe in all of these things. So uh it's great to have a have the opportunity to discuss them at length with two experts and you know, experts in these these different but beautifully intersecting areas. So thank you both so much. This has been really fascinating. Lots to go away and and read and think more about as well. And I hope that goes for anybody listening to this, also. So thank you both so much.

Support Humanists UK And More

Andrew Copson 59:07

Thank you for listening to Unholy Histories, the Humanist Heritage Podcast, brought to you by Humanists UK. To join, support, or find out more about Humanist UK's campaigns and services, visit humanists.uk, or you can follow us on social media at Humanistsuk. This podcast was produced by Humanize Live. Find out more about creating content for compassionate communities at www.humanize.live.

Madeleine Goodall 59:30

And you can find out more about the rich history and influence of humanism on the Humanist Heritage website at heritage.humanist.uk, and the thing.